The present invention relates to an apparatus for the application of a pliable web of material onto corrugated sheet.
Through U.S. Pat. No. 3,773,603 a building element for uninsulated roofing and walls is known, which comprises an even or corrugated sheet element which for the purpose of preventing the dripping of condensation water is coated with a glass fiber layer about 0,5 to 1 mm thick.
The patented corrugated roof element is marketed since several years under the trademark NOCONDROP.
Initially, a rational production of the roofing elements coated with a thin web of non-woven glass fibers on an industrial basis turned out to be difficult. Originally, they were produced on a purely handicraft basis starting from finished trapezoidally corrugated sheet elements which were placed on a table and sprayed with a glue. The problem was the application of the thin fiber web, having a thickness of only about 0,5 to 1 mm, in a pleated condition perpendicularly to the corrugations of the sheet element. By means of a wooden board about 15 mm thick the fiber web was pressed down into the corrugations and glued to the sheet. Obviously, this was a very trying work resulting in a small output.
Accordingly, with the increasing demand for the NOCONDROP roofing the provision of a more rational production technique came to the fore. One solution resulted in in that, currently, the sheet metal is manufactured into its finished condition except the corrugation. The flat sheet metal is finished in the conventional manner, lacquered on one side in the desired color and the mineral fiber layer glued on the other side. Only thereafter the sheet material is passed through a stripforming machine including a plurality pairs of profile rollers the profile depth of which increases successively from the center towards the edges. It should be appreciated that the manufacturing procedure described presupposes access to the strip-forming machine of a large steel- or aluminum-works, and because the production of NOCONDROP elements at least for the time being comprises only a relatively small part of the total production of corrugated sheet of the steel- or aluminumworks, this implies that change-over of the strip-forming machine from the normal production to the production of the present elements and return to normal production is accompanied by high costs which, in turn, results in that the profitability for the production of the fiber-coated sheet elements presupposes that the rearrangements of the strip-forming machine are not made too frequently and that a great number of orders must be piled before a rearrangement may be made.
Obviously, the described large-scale production of fiber-coated corrugated sheet elements has also its limitations as long as a large-scale strip-forming machine is fully occupied with the normal production. Moreover, most countries have no steelworks with strip-forming machines.